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Salsa Engage is cloud-based fundraising system for nonprofit organizations of all sizes which helps in donor management, digital marketing, online fundraising, online advocacy and peer to peer fundraising.

With Salsa Engage, users can organize their campaigns, track donor data and analyze the results of previous campaigns to improve. Additionally, users can automate processes such as feeding information directly into donor profiles.

Salsa Engage keeps a track of communication with donors which is accessible to team members, enables them to provides personalized and avoid repeat information. Users can create customized dashboards to track and measure key metrics with real-time visualization. Reports can be scheduled to deliver on a recurring basis.

Users can perform A/B testing on different design elements and check preview on a range of devices before sending.

Support is available via phone, email and through an online knowledge base.

More Apple, Less PC: Incredibly Robust software, yet needs ease of use

Pros

The vast amount of robust capabilities built into the software platform, always finding new ways of accomplishing tasks and eventually easier ways of doing them.

Cons

It has more of a Microsoft/tech geek feel to the GUI and application's use, rather than the Apple business model for ease-of-use right out of the box, that most non-profit volunteers/activists are accustomed to using for getting a task done quickly — the obvious metaphor to me the difference between the mechanic who wants to get under the hood of his new car and tweak and modify like a hot rod, compared to the average person who wants to drive a Honda off the lot, to get from A-to-B effortlessly and reliably without much thought because they have bigger jobs to do than figure out the mode of transporation, that the car is just a tool and you shouldn't have to take multiple mechanic classes to figure out how to drive it.

Albeit, Mailchimp is a different platform for smaller email tasks for small groups, yet their ease-of-use GUI model helps the lay person get done quickly and with less confusion. Our IT personnel love the Salsa platform which is all that really needs to be said, yet the people who have to use it on a daily basis compare it to a flight cockpit of endless switches and tabs. For a premiere email database platform that Salsa is, I'm still waiting for emails I send to be fully-responsive and readable on the smallest smartphone. Just not there yet. Mentioned that at the last Salsa training event in San Francisco last fall, which we were told is coming... Still love the software platform. Even though the FAQs leave you wanting and confused with laborious hoops to jump through for answers to problems that mostly don't seem to work, sending a ticket to Salsa gets a quick, friendly response, a great answer and usually a screen capture of what precisely to do in a succinct manner, which should populate the FAQ area instead and the answer model to use.

And one last thought, as with the SF training event mentioned here, and the last Salsa conference in Virginia, it was an obvious sea of Apple laptops and iPads across the board at all events, all tables. So, the clientele around DC and elsewhere, the core target demographic for your software that traveled to the conference, prefer out of-the-box, ease-of-use products to get the job done, quickly.

May 2018

Derek from Arthritis National Research Foundation

Company Size: 2-10 employees

Review Source

Ease-of-use

4 of 5

Value for money

5 of 5

Customer support

5 of 5

Functionality

5 of 5

May 2018

Great Value and Functionality

I would recommend this solution over the other available nonprofit management enterprise solutions on the market. You get the most functionality for the money and they're constantly expanding the software's ability and support.

Pros

Almost all the digital marketing tools you'll need in one platform. Social media and email marketing, custom donation forms, drip campaigns, peer to peer software, event registration and donor segmentation. These are just the pros of the marketing side. The CRM, formerly DonorPro, includes robust reporting and tracking for all your needs from donation tracking to notes to event management, volunteer management and membership management. Truly and all inclusive system that is getting better and better all the time.

Cons

There have been some growing pains that have been mostly worked out in the transition to convert DonorPro into the Salsa platform. Communication between the CRM and the marketing software is still not entirely fluid, but it gets the job done effectively after you fully understand the system from training. The social media scheduling tool needs a little work to get on the hootsuite or sendible level, but again it still functions well for an all-inclusive solution for no extra money.

November 2018

Karen from Population Research Institute

Company Size: 2-10 employees

Review Source: Capterra

Ease-of-use

5 of 5

Value for money

5 of 5

Customer support

5 of 5

Functionality

5 of 5

November 2018

So glad we switched!

I'd recommend Salsa Engage to anyone who wants to streamline their online outreach, especially if you have a small to mid-size organization with a small but dedicated team . And if you use Salsa CRM, it integrates so beautifully, you'll be glad you make this move.

Pros

First off, the superficial, but important fact that it looks great! It is also very simple to use. Getting our staff up a running with daily tasks, took only one or two hours of training, as opposed to weeks or months in Raiser's Edge. The templates are a great help and time saver. Even from scratch layout is super simple and intuitive. Engage offers expanded possibilities, like e-mail series, and A/B tests, and integrated donation pages, AND online advocacy! It has it all, with super built-in Analytics! Customer support, and our Success Coach, are key reasons for our success too!And, we are able to direct more resources to our projects, thanks to a real savings! Engage seamlessly integrates with the CRM which greatly simplifies data management. We still have room to grow with Engage, but are already achieving more that we ever could with Online Express. Salsa Engage beats it by miles!

Cons

Transition is NEVER fun! or simple! Plan for this if you are a making ANY database change. We lost about 20 of our monthly donors. Lesson learned. Plan, Plan, Plan, And ASK every single question you have and write down every single thing you need the new program to do. And make them show you how to get it done, before you purchase. This isn't Salsa specific. General transition advice form one who now knows!That said, Salsa has done everything to help us get up and running and we are thrilled!

June 2015

Erin from Shenandoah Valley Network

Ease-of-use

3 of 5

Customer support

5 of 5

Functionality

4 of 5

June 2015

Salsa - flexible, multifaceted and great support team

Pros

Our non-profit aids other smaller non-profit organizations in outreach and advocacy efforts around a variety of issues. Salsa has been great for us because it so flexible and capable of many different types of outreach and advocacy. It has helped us with large scale campaigns and small scale, regular communication with supporters. We are even starting to use it for donor management. One really useful feature in Salsa is its ability to seemingly integrate into our webpage for advocacy actions, so folks can visit our page and take action without feeling like they're getting shuttled somewhere else where their contact information/identity may feel less secure. It is also fun to watch the action unfold and track response on the back end to evaluate the effectiveness of our campaign. The best part - if you run into a wall using the software, Salsa's support team is very quick to respond and amazingly helpful.

Cons

Salsa, at times, can seem very complicated to use, but that is because it is such a powerful, multifaceted tool. And, like I mentioned, when it gets complicated, Salsa's support team is right there to help. One wish for the software would be that web and email templates could be a little more easy to put together, more flexible and more polished. This may speak more to my lack of design code knowledge than of Salsa Software, but I feel like my final html email products aren't as shiny as some I've produced in html email specific software.

May 2018

Beth from NRCM

Company Size: 11-50 employees

Review Source

Ease-of-use

4 of 5

Value for money

4 of 5

Customer support

4 of 5

Functionality

3 of 5

May 2018

User friendly effective tool

We have been using Salsa for more than 18 months and are happy with the product. There have been numerous updates and improvements in social media sharing and other pieces since we signed on with Salsa, and we are happy with those changes. Customer support has improved dramatically since we first signed on, and I feel like we hear back with solutions to our problems, though sometimes I wish they could update incorrect legislative district information more quickly so that folks could take action when an issue is "hot." We use Salsa for advocacy actions, events, P2P fundraising, and donations and I feel like it is a very comprehensive tool to take care of all of those pieces of our work. I would recommend Salsa to organizations looking for online tools to advance their work.

Pros

Easy to use for the staff person as well as for the end userSocial share feature works wellCustomer service support is goodGreat insights and reports

Cons

Isn't easily compatible with our offline databaseTakes a while to update incorrect House and Senate district information when it's incorrect for constituents

June 2015

Paulette from Ms. Foundation for Women

Ease-of-use

3.5 of 5

Customer support

4.5 of 5

Functionality

4.5 of 5

June 2015

Two organizations. Five years. Salsa makes it easy.

Pros

Simplicity of use - at least the basics - regardless of the web development skillset of the staff. The packages are also customizable for the needs of one's organization: if you need the whole kit 'n' kaboodle, you get it. If not, you get only what you need. You can also set permission levels for staff to control who can do what to which parts of the packages.

Cons

The look of the forms! For orgs that can't splurge on a web developer/designer, it can be absolutely frustrating to have to clean up so many of Salsa's forms just to get them to be visually pleasing. Also, much of the common changes that orgs want to make seem to be found in some special coding: wouldn't it be easier to provide the types of forms with info most people want, but give them the option to take it off (rather than having to know and trust their coding skills to add them)?

June 2018

Shauna from Touchstone Center for Crafts

Review Source: Capterra

Ease-of-use

5 of 5

Value for money

4 of 5

Customer support

5 of 5

Functionality

5 of 5

June 2018

Salsa Engage improved our event management and communication

Pros

The event software allowed our small arts organization the ability to have online ticketing for events, which saved tons of staff time because they no longer need to take phone reservations. We have a better count of open to the public events also, because we ask supporters to make a no charge reservation online. The system put our e-mail communications together with all of our online communications. It is easy to use and the built in templates are simple to modify.

Cons

The system works well for us and we regularly use all of the features. Our supporters like being able to access event registrations when it is convenient for them.

November 2018

Ken from ARVC Foundation

Company Size: 11-50 employees

Review Source: Capterra

Ease-of-use

5 of 5

Value for money

5 of 5

Customer support

5 of 5

Functionality

5 of 5

November 2018

Salsa Engage

Easy to use and support team is on top of their game. They always answer my calls and respond to me quickly. They helped me create some incredible reports, these reports that make my job easier.

Pros

I find Salsa Engage is very easy to use and very easy to maneuver around. My questions are often answered just by playing around in the software. The support team is always helplful and they respond in a very timely manner

Cons

I personally don't like trying out new software, I usually don't like the change. I didn't like the look the first time I used it, but that changed once I starting using it. Worth the price for sure.

November 2018

Adrienne from social service agency

Company Size: 11-50 employees

Review Source: Capterra

Ease-of-use

4 of 5

Value for money

4 of 5

Customer support

4 of 5

Functionality

4 of 5

November 2018

Business Manager

Salsa has a great training program and their customer service department is very friendly and is able to help me out when I need assistance. Salsa Engage allows a small nonprofit to afford customized event forms.

Pros

Allows us to customize online forms for fundraising events at an affordable price. Easy to use and pull reports.

Cons

I do not like the fact that the donation information flows into the system without any way to approve it.

December 2018

Olivia from The CLEO Institute

Company Size: 2-10 employees

Review Source: Capterra

Ease-of-use

3 of 5

Value for money

3 of 5

Customer support

5 of 5

Functionality

4 of 5

December 2018

Salsa Engage for nonprofits

Its been ok. There are kinks that do sometimes get worked out by the company. Overall they have great customer service. So when I do have an issue, I get a quick response.

Pros

Salsa generally has a user-friendly interface. Its a platform that be used for everything from E-blasts, to fundraising, to sign-up forms and so much more. I believe there are many told and functions that I have not had an opportunity to use.

Cons

I mostly use for the e-blasts. I find the choices, formatting and other functions limited or strange. For example, the text boxes are finicky every time you make changes in one sentence it seems to make changes to entire text box, forcing you to reformat the whole box again. Also the formatting often doesn't always look great in news letters. There seems to be little room for customizing so that paragraphs and images line up properly, forcing us to put everything in a column rather than in more modern layouts.

June 2015

Jamie from Appalachian Voices

Ease-of-use

3.5 of 5

Customer support

5 of 5

Functionality

4.5 of 5

June 2015

Gets the job done

Pros

Salsa provides us with most of the tools and products we need at a price affordable to small and mid-sized nonprofits. Their query and reporting tools are very robust and allow for detailed tracking of supporter actions.

Cons

It is fairly challenging to customize the look and feel of the donation and signup forms, and their out-of-the-box design is fairly clunky and not super modern. It would be nice if their developers were a little more receptive to working on customizations and improvements (as one-off projects outside of the monthly fee schedule).

February 2018

Jacqueline from Lifestyle Medicine Foundation

Company Size: 2-10 employees

Review Source

Ease-of-use

3 of 5

Value for money

3 of 5

Customer support

5 of 5

Functionality

3 of 5

February 2018

Does what we need but have come across many, many issues

We still use this software because we're already signed on and it does what we need. However, I have been very frustrated with it for some time.

Pros

Helps us do all of our engagement in one platform whereas we had multiple softwares before. Like the 'all in one' aspect of it. Good support team.

Hi Jacqueline - We are concerned about your review because this is the opposite of what we're hearing from our other Engage users. We will have our Smart Start strategist Ilona reach out to you immediately to see if we can help you get more comfortable with the tools.

September 2018

Anonymous

Verified Reviewer

Company Size: 2-10 employees

Review Source: Capterra

Ease-of-use

1 of 5

Value for money

2 of 5

Customer support

2 of 5

Functionality

3 of 5

September 2018

Designed to make Life difficult

We have been using it for two years and have done several events and countless email blasts and the learning curve is still way too steep. We frequently have requests for simple things like linking directly to the ticket sales page and we have to wait a year for implementation because the process is in a widget. We will be switching to something more user friendly.

Pros

It was not as expensive as some of the other professional suites.

Cons

This is the most non intuitive program i have ever used. It can do what you need but it is not going to be easy to get there and will take days if you have to go back and forth with the help center.

They don't appear to be super compatible with safari. They open helpful windows and the close function will be off screen. Nothing is more frustrating then trying to get something done and have a pop obscure your window and you can't close it. I stopped to write this review because thats where I am and it has happened more then once this year.

The help documents on-line frequently do not match the program or the information is obtuse. They will give an instruction but not how to reach the page where the function is buried and the screen shot will look nothing like the current program. Do you assume its outdated or spend an hour looking for the secret portal...It will not be where you logically thing it should be.

There query system for generating and outputting mailing lists is cumbersome and takes several steps to achieve what seems like a simple task. If you need to know who was added to your database this year you have to select several pulldowns before you can select the date. If you output the wrong way it will delete the first digit of any zip code that starts with zero.

The design engine for email blasts is clunky and leaves too much space between elements that can't be adjusted. It makes for some awkward spacing and alignment.

June 2015

Karen from Born Free USA

Ease-of-use

2.5 of 5

Customer support

4.5 of 5

Functionality

2.5 of 5

June 2015

Good platform but needs some work

Pros

Salsa has provided great customer service -- whenever we have an issue, their tech support team gets on it ASAP and usually has everything resolved pretty quickly.

Cons

The system can be a little difficult to use in certain ways -- for instance, building donation pages can be buggy at times, as selecting social media functions causes the page you're working on to close, or when you're randomly forced to sign out and sign back in again because certain functions are no longer working in a single session (i.e. if you want to create two or more donation pages in a row, you need to log out and log back in before you build each new page or you won't be able to select the right template for the pages). These aren't MAJOR issues, but they are annoying when you're trying to bang out a lot of work. Another thing is that the STOREFRONT feature is sorely underdeveloped and could use a lot of work and additional functionality, such as the ability to calculate sales tax, built-in social media functionality, more dynamic product options (like the ability to charge different prices for different versions of the same store item, or the ability to select multiple product types on a single storefront item). You would need to get outside developers to build these features for you, if you really need them.

August 2017

Steve from Lisa's Army

Company Size: 11-50 employees

Review Source

Ease-of-use

4 of 5

Value for money

4 of 5

Customer support

5 of 5

Functionality

5 of 5

August 2017

Chose Salsa after extensive trade study and so far am glad we did

Tough to choose among the many products out there, but Salsa was one of just a few that stood out above the rest for our needs. On my first pass I didn't include them in my top 5 down select, mainly because I thought having separate CRM and Engage products would be problematic. However Software Advice recommended taking a look, and when we did they ended up edging the competition. I spoke to a reference customer who said that the two products work well together, and was especially impressed with the progress the Salsa team has made in improving the products over the last year.

Pros

Customer service and attentiveness have been great. Much more personal than some of the other big name products, where I felt like we were a number in their sales pipeline. Like the kick start process that Salsa has in place.

Cons

None yet. We've just started to use it. Separate CRM and Engage products are not ideal, but they pull it off well. Skill Labs learning videos are really good, though it can be annoying that they force you to go in a certain order for some modules.

March 2018

Kalyn from Western Michigan University

Review Source: Capterra

Ease-of-use

5 of 5

Value for money

5 of 5

Customer support

4 of 5

Functionality

5 of 5

March 2018

Great drag and drop system!

We can combine all of our external communications including event pages, donation pages, and email marketing into one platform!

Pros

Love the easy marketing platform engage has built with the ability to craft visually dynamic emails and all of our event/fundraising pages!

Cons

The company does quite a few updates, which is great, however, sometimes these cause a bug in the system and it will interfere with functionality temporarily.

February 2019

Grace from Able South Carolina

Company Size: 11-50 employees

Review Source: Capterra

Ease-of-use

3 of 5

Customer support

5 of 5

Functionality

4 of 5

February 2019

Hard(ish) to learn, but great functionality

Our nonprofit uses Salsa Engage for grassroots advocacy, fundraising, communications, and event planning. Being able to combine four different services into one integrative platform has saved the organization countless hours and effort.

Pros

Salsa Engage really seems to do it all. We use it as our grassroots advocacy platform and are able to track interactions from our campaign. This allows us to collect tangible data about how many people called, emailed, or mailed their representatives. Salsa Engage has also replaced our giving pages, Eventbrite, and MailChimp. It's been so great to have one platform for all our communications and be able to track and connect everything. When things get complicated, customer support is usually a 10-minute hold and are able to walk me through it.

Cons

Setting up Salsa Engage and CRM took FOREVER! I didn't have a whole lot of time set aside to set it up, but even if I had, I expect it took at least 20 hours. Now that it's set up and I've completed the online training, I still find hidden issues with just about everything it does. The good news is customer support is always able to explain exactly what I need to do to fix it. I know eventually, I'll have worked through all the issues and will just know better.

June 2015

Lauren from KAHEA: The Hawaiian Environmental Alliance

Ease-of-use

5 of 5

Customer support

5 of 5

Functionality

4 of 5

June 2015

Great all inclusive product, attentive and helpful customer service.

Pros

I like that a variety of our needs are met by one sleek product. Not only is this convenient, not only does it centrally store our supporter data, it also provides invaluable context about that data, that would otherwise be very difficult to see. The ability to see these connections and trends is vital to the success of our campaigns.

Cons

The price is difficult to justify for a small non-profit.

July 2015

Ziggy from Truthout

Ease-of-use

3 of 5

Customer support

5 of 5

Functionality

4 of 5

July 2015

Mostly happy, but with some concerns.

Pros

As a full service product Salsa is an easier to use alternative to Salesforce (I used Salesforce for several years).

Cons

The administrative area is very hard on the eyes, sometimes buggy and poorly designed. The templating feature is draconian and lacks modern features like drag and drop. I encourage Salsa staff to sign up for a Mail Chimp demo and looks at how easy it is to create templates, on the fly, with no need to manipulate or import code. This applies to the donation page templates as well. Also, there aren't enough built in reports and building reports requires a degree in Salsa. It would be good if Salsa integrated with a greater number of merchants.

July 2015

Dan from ProActive Content

Review Source: Capterra

Ease-of-use

3 of 5

Customer support

5 of 5

July 2015

Saves a ton of time behind the scenes of nonprofit work

Salsa has lots of features that save loads of time for a hard-pressed or over-extended nonprofit staff. Especially if you're relying mostly on volunteers.
It helps keep track of donors -- how much and when they give.
You can set up a peer to peer fundraising campaign so your supporters can have their own web pages to raise funds with
You can set up a cause-campaign where you enable supporters to write letters to congressmen and other people in power.
And it also easily collects and organizes information about donors and signups anytime someone enters their information.
It can be set up to send out auto-responder emails any time someone gives or signs up.
All this means you don't have to devote precious staff time to these tasks, once the Salsa system is in place.
In addition, the customer support staff is highly responsive and works with you until things are working right.
The only thing to be aware of is that a knowledge of html helps. If no one on your team has this knowledge, there are some features that will be harder to customize. There is a bit of a learning curve up front (anticipate spending a couple months getting things set up). Once it's "humming" along, it allows you to focus on other tasks -- the ones you'd rather be doing.
Review from: www.proactivecontent.net

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